“But Henry G. Surface wasn’t rotting in jail in 1875,” said William Klinker, and boldly winked at the little Doctor.

The Major, disconcerted for an instant by his anachronism, recovered superbly.  “My vision, sir, was prophetic.  The stain was upon him.  The cloven foot had already been betrayed....”

“And who was Henry G. Surface?” inquired Mr. Queed.

“What!  You haven’t heard that infamous story!” cried the Major, with the surprised delight of the inveterate raconteur who has unexpectedly stumbled upon an audience.

A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was standing, bowing in his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter.

“Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through Major Brooke’s tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so good as to excuse me.”

And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn goatee stabbing the atmosphere before him, in rather a heavy silence.

“Pish!” snapped the Major, when the door had safely shut.  And tapping his forehead significantly, he gave his head a few solemn wags and launched upon the worn biography of Henry G. Surface.

Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the boarders listened with a perennial interest while Major Brooke expounded the familiar details.  His wealth of picturesque language we may safely omit, and briefly remind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. Surface found himself, during the decade following Appomattox, with his little world at his feet.  He was thirty at the time, handsome, gifted, high-spirited, a brilliant young man who already stood high in the councils of the State.  But he was also restless in disposition, arrogant, over-weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief—­“a yellow streak in him, and we didn’t know it!” bellowed the Major.  Bitterly chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early seventies, the United States Senatorship which he had confidently expected, young Surface, in a burst of anger and resentment, committed the unforgivable sin.  He went over bag and baggage to the other side, to the “nigger party” whom all his family, friends, and relations, all his “class,” everybody else with his instincts and traditions, were desperately struggling, by hook and by crook, to crush.

In our mild modern preferences as between presidents, or this governor and that, we catch no reminiscence of the fierce antagonisms of the elections of reconstruction days.  The idolized young tribune of the people became a Judas Iscariot overnight, with no silver pieces as the price of his apostasy.  If he expected immediate preferment from the other camp, he was again bitterly disappointed.  Life meantime had become unbearable to him.  He was ostracized more studiously than any leper; it is said that his own father cut him when they passed each other in the street.  His young wife died, heartbroken, it was believed, by the flood of hatred and vilification that poured